Weekly news and features for business continuity professionals

Formed in 1999 as a program within an established human services organization, Pet Safe has endured through political climate change as well as environmental changes. Pet Safe is now the only not-for-profit organization on Long Island dedicated solely to keeping household pets safe in disasters.

SMBs are increasingly being forced to do everything that the enterprise organization has to deal with: security, business continuity, compliance, etc. They don’t get any free passes. Yet, they don’t always have the resources to solve the problem.

Louisiana State University’s (LSU’s) Stephenson Disaster Management Institute (SDMI) was born after LSU’s own resilience was tested (and proven). SDMI is all about “causing a culture change in recovery.” To this end, the CBP “focuses on making sure that the business community, and in particular the small-business community, is better positioned to endure an interruption, and not just a disaster.”

In the leadup to the Continuity Insights New York Conference, October 15-16, 2013 at the AMA Executive Conference Center in the heart of Times Square, Continuity Insights asks presenters about their chosen topics, critical business continuity skills and hypothetical Central Park statues. This week, Harvey Betan, Associate Principal, Risk Masters Inc., discusses how to focus on the big picture.

Continuity Insights sat down with Cindy Auten, general manager, Mobile Work Exchange, formerly known as Telework Exchange, to learn more about mobility best practices, and how telework and business continuity can work hand-in-hand.

One tool in the quest for ever-increasing reliability in power is the fuel cell. Fuel cells have been commercially available to communications network customers for a decade, with a number of suppliers providing products globally. Within early adopters, fuel cell usage has progressed from early trials to larger rollouts providing critical backup power to several hundred sites in a single network.

Gartner predicts that 70 percent of mobile professionals will use a personal device for work by 2018. Steve Durbin, a former vice president at Gartner who now serves as global vice president for the Information Security Forum (ISF), has seen the quest for enterprise security move its focus off of devices and toward bigger picture issues.

In the world of business continuity, mobility seems to be on everyone’s minds. More explicitly, customers and vendors alike are asking how the proliferation of powerful mobile devices can impact and improve IT and business continuity management systems. Fortunately, there are solutions harnessing these devices.

It’s been said that an organization can’t manage what it can’t measure. Applying this principle to business resilience might read that an organization can’t count on what it hasn’t tested. It would be imprudent to assume that plans and solutions in place adequately address the risks an organization has defined.

Emergency communication strategies have evolved greatly over the last few decades, but the very evolution that has changed notifications for the better has also created some confusion. Information technology capabilities are increasing with regard to bandwidth and throughput.

Participants in the current debate over the NSA's surveillance programs seek a balance between security and privacy. While some argue that the government has overstepped its bounds, others say that the monitoring of communications is an essential tool for keeping the country’s citizens safe.

At the first-annual Continuity Insights Chicago conference, David Lindstedt, PhD, PMP, CBCP, Director, Program Management: Office of Distance Education and eLearning at The Ohio State University, presented “Preparedness & Recoverability Metrics: Quantifying Confidence & Assessing Intuitions.” Continuity Insights spoke with Dr. Lindstedt in order to learn more about his topic.

The tragic and sad events of April 15, 2013 near the finish line of the Boston Marathon remind us that we are never far away from terrorism. Business continuity planners should be thinking about the effects of a terrorist attack near their places of work and develop plans to address the threat.